3 am || KiriBaku ||

3:17

3:17

is when the door whines open. Kirishima can't detect the footsteps beforehand and realsies how much creeping through slabs of rubble to escape the peripherals of villains has paid off. He catches the slow way the figure draws in, twisting around the corner of the threshold, lugging a bareness that chills the dead air alongside him. Katsuki stands in the doorway, his silhouette broad and stiff.

His hair is a turmoil of bedhead, making it's usual dishevelment more distinguishable insouciant. For a moment Kirishima wants to smile, get up and tease his fingers through them. But he doesn't because that's not them anymore. They're both silent and whilst Kirishima feels his stare is heavy on the visitor, Katsuki's eyes, which he can barely catch as flecks of gold in the dark, are glazed over, empty, at nothing in particular.

Kirishima croaks out a little: "Hey." and when Katsuki doesn't reply, a leaden awkwardness pushes him to say, "Are... you okay?"

It's a stupid question but he asks it anyway with a sincerity. Of course he's not okay. Neither one is. There hasn't been a time in months, years maybe, for any one of his classmates to be able to grit out an answer to such a question without it tasting foul in their mouths. If Bakugo were okay he wouldn't be standing, fading, like a shivering flame by the doorframe. If Bakugo were okay there would be no need to voice such a fleeting concern. It's more of a means to fill out the air, test his own voice against the fickle atmosphere. He does care though, even If Katsuki doesn't let it translate

It seems like the stretch of an entire night, but finally, some intangible necessity brings Katsuki out of his haunting haze and his head tilts enough so that he meets Kirishima's gaze. It's transient and utterly phlegmatic, tossing itself away as soon as it comes. The door widens a little with another groan before shutting and in a span that Kirishima can't remember or at least process, Katsuki is sat at the foot of his bed. The mattress sinks. Warmth touches Kirishima's toe against another breathing body sharing the surface he does. His head is so incredibly numb and his throat feels like it's caving in on itself. Nothing goes through his mind on what to say and despite the absence of words waning the air, the silence is ear-splitting.

He turns instead to watch the figure on the bed; elbows on his spread knees, head craned; the outline looks worn. From the edges of the tank top to the curve of his jowl, all is frayed and weary. Kirishima can see the slightest tremble at the crooks of his knees. Old, almost frail. The planes of his face terrifyingly bear no pieces that could fit any emotion and for a guy that Kirishima is so used to seeing be creased with spite and hungry ambition, it's like watching an eerie calm before a storm.

What the storm is, he's not sure, there have been so many torrents already that have ravished every supple sapling of security, if there were something else he hoped it would be grand. Final. Though there was a gripping bleakness to the thought of this finality.

Kirishima had thought about it; the end. It's shadow followed his manner and every heel of his step. Part of him yearned to reach that golden finish line, to rest his forehead and breath in the scent of unharmed, safe land; he was oh so tired but not a tiredness that you could sleep off.

He slept alot and often, during lunch breaks and long stretches of Sunday afternoons. He barely dreams and they serve as more of means to leaf through time, filling gaps with dull voids to escape his thoughts. The tiredness that rests on him, circling a preying finger over his chest is one that stays with you, claiming you by your lost youth. It lies on you with its own body, without a pulse, more of a corpse that's unrelenting to drop off no matter how much you roll and shake your shoulders.

Nonetheless there's another part of him, one that's sunk into him like teeth drawing black, fleshy blood-- the thought of the nothingness that will follow when he crosses that finish line.

There were so many times he thought the next fight would be the last -- the stakes felt so indistinguishable that surely they had won this time. There would be this pause in time where everything floated alongside the particles of dust swept off from the rubble.

He'd feel light and realise the heaviness he'd felt the past months wasn't a nature grown into the marrow of his bone. He'd look over his shoulders at the others with filmy relief on his eyes, streaming, cleaning the dirt from his cheeks and untwisting the cement set of his jaw. Denki would catch his eye and despite being doubled over in a short-circuit daze, he would manage a small languished smile and the solace of his friend's spared life would become so great that it'd whittle to escape itself as a fractured sob.

But he'd come to learn that this was all ephemeral, in the same way a rabbit spasms at the maw of its predator; a desperate cry for the stranger's comfort of finality. He'd breathe in the fumes of frangible hope with every mumbled prayer made as he changed time and time again into his hero outfit --he no longer felt like a man, feeling the fabric cling to his edges, the promise of battle no longer felt heroic-- and if it was manly, was heroic, part of him didn't want it anymore.

All this hope intoxicated him into a delirium that was shattered by gravity slowly dwindling back to make his limbs leaden again as he'd catch Izuku's face. Like paper, white, thinned and crumpled. This was not the end. It would seem that there was no end. This wasn't just his life, but the beginning of it. The more he ran the more he realised the golden line only became distinguishable after decades, if not death.

And what's to come after? He's become so used to the whiplash glares of paparazzi, often swarming them like ants to rotting apple cores; The adrenaline crackling through his veins, Suneater steady behind him, Fatgum's crying orders drowned out by static ringing in his ears. When he'll take his costume off and hang it up one last time, leaving his second skin to accumulate dust in a desolate cupboard. He'd be too old to fight anymore, reclining in a settee or wherever else he can rest his legs. Red Riot rendered to a past name, watching the younger generations cycle through the only life he's ever known through the dingy screen of a television-- is that what awaits him?

He reads his own thoughts off the ghostly figure in front of him, as if Katsuki himself is a cruel emblem reminding Kirishima of the growing tremors in the smiles he edges each day.

Katsuki Bakugo The name slurs in his head and mouth, tasting of a familiar liquor. Look, But he doesn't. He hasn't moved. Kirishima isn't sure he's even blinked. Can you even see me? Do you even know I'm in this room?

The boy- is he even a boy anymore? He looks so washed out amongst the black, faded. He wears a solemn sensibility that only a man should know, not a child. Like Izuku and Shoto, he's been carved by an architect that chips prodigies apart into bearing years beyond the vessel they've been provided. Just the curvature of his spine threatens to snap in from the pressure.

Foot clammy under the covers, Kirishima nudges it against Katsuiki's lower back. He notices the twitch of readjusting shoulder blades, awakening the first signs of life other than the half-tortured trembles of his knees.